Tourist Eye View: Visual Poetry

Here’s our first kinda-depressing Tourist Eye View—and I wouldn’t post it if it weren’t so damn beautiful. Toronto-based Robert Mentov took a tour of the Northeast of the good ol’ U. S. of A. and took some truly gorgeous footage of some sort of crumbling urban spaces, and I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that Brooklyn, that beauty queen of dilapidation, features prominently as an example of cinematic crappiness. Add to that a deep-timbered voice reciting a Gil Scott-Heron poem and a couple of slow, dramatic edits, and you have yourself a lovely, blues-inspiring/inspired visual poem. I do take umbrage with Mentov’s calling it “the decrepit east coast of America,” though. C’mon, man.